For those of you who came in late, there are rules.

1. Leave a comment here, indicating that you want some deep , probing questions. Or soft, playful ones. Or really, any damn sort of questions I feel like asking.

2. I give you some.

3. You answer them in your own space, and post some version of these here rules.

So, Washu-Chan queries:

You have a wonderful voice, and you truly enjoy musical theater. Have you ever had the urge to actually perform on stage?

I have, and did at one point in my life. Before I met you, I had been the male lead in a production of “Kiss me Kate” crossed with “Brigadoon” (two performances, went nowhere). I did Stand-up comedy for a while, and was in a band in College, and another shortly after.

Then life got in the way.

And then my voice went downhill along with my hearing. College was an Explosive time, both figuratively and literally. While I can still sing one or two songs “well”, my lungpower is about that long, and no more. I can no longer sustain a full performance, and there are some notes I can no longer reach without pushing.

Pushing = bad.

I have a theory that I could sing ballads and standards (think Dan Fogelberg, Jim Croce), and am occasionally tempted to join up with one of the many bands a co-worker fronts. But I do not write music, and I since I do not play an instrument at present, I donâ€t have a lot to offer artistically. What poetry Iâ€ve written does not translate well to song, and it‘s been 16 years since I was at all serious about it.

But, I AM the pirate King…And in the dark, itâ€s easy to pretend.

Were your assorted health issues better or worse while living in the Tri-Cities?

Better. Far better. You might say, a 100-300% improvement over my current state. But the jobs there are not careers, or rather, not careers I wanted to Continue. When offered a chance to work in the Publishing industry (for the second time), I did not feel I could pass it up. Trading health for finance was and is an acceptable compromise.

I assume you’ve read SM Stirling’s “Dies the Fire” trilogy. Do you think you would survive that type of apocalyptic scenario? With your love of toys, would you want to?

I have not. But just from context in the question, I could survive. However, I would not want to. I live on a first strike target for a reason. I have no interest in rebuilding a society. I have great interest in living in a different kind of society, where the merits of the individual are judged by his performance and service to others, rather than the accumulation of profits.

Hippie stuff, I know.

On the mater of Toys. Toys are things of the moment. I like toys, but I am not overly attached to them. I certainly do not want to come home to an empty house and a note that says, “thanks, sucker.” But Iâ€ve lost everything once already, and I know that it is survivable. Stuff is just stuff. Itâ€s not real. My interaction with the stuff gives it meaning.

Example. I own well over 1000 audio CDs. I cannot possibly listen to them all in a reasonable time frame. Event with the artifice of compressed media, I canâ€t even come close. But if I want that one, one disc. I can just for a moment understand what the artist wanted me to understand. That is real.

So Iâ€m willing to trade space and stuff for that memory. Iâ€m currently engaged in cataloguing and organizing said stuff. Not so that I can sell it, but to see what experiences I used to have access to need to be reacquired.

If I had to start over, I would. I have nothing but time. (time is also not real, we create it by our desire for experiences.)

MMORPG – why WOW over EQ2?

Iâ€ll be brutally honest. Eq2 is doomed, and Iâ€m surprised that it has lasted as long as it has. WOW has 10 million subscribers, and that base is growing fast. It is easy, cheap, and plays across platforms. It is also rather intuitive, and is based on a philosophy of regular and random rewards. In itâ€s purest form, it is abstract of good and evil; it focused on surmounting obstacles through sound decisions, and doing favors for people in need. At itâ€s worst, it is about establishing dominance over players with less skill and opportunity to develop it.

These things are true of any MMORPG, but more so of WOW. Iâ€ve had a copy of EQ2 sitting on my desk for over 2 years , and Iâ€ve never cracked it. I even think it has a few months of free play. Iâ€m just not interested.

I also have not played any WOW since Halloween. So right now itâ€s neither. I do have Empire builder set up in my front room, though.

Music performance games – Rock Band or Karaoke Revolution (or whatever karaoke game)?

Karaoke game. “Rock band/Guitar hero/ Dance Dance whatever” train you to a specific skill set, which has little relation to the actual activity simulated.

But to play at Sing, you just have to be willing to sing. And I am.
To play at Sing well, you have to be willing to learn to scoring solutions of the game.

Which is Math.

I like Math.

Also, my damaged brain cannot properly coordinate hands and body fast enough to meet the requirements of the guitar games. It is possible to play DDR with just a hand controller, and the songs on Karaoke Revolution Party that are enhanced by that software are quite challenging.

I do like the Taiko drummer game, though. In my future, I may try to play at Drums.